I received some WONDERFUL mail last week from my Shop, Swap, and Blog partner, April Hall. April is a paper artist who is committed to bringing joy to others with her handmade creations. Her work is super cool, well-constructed and just darling! Do yourself a favor and head over to her Etsy shop to pick up a few cards for yourself!

www.aprilscreations.etsy.com

I am bulding a kind empire. It is being lashed together so carefully with tiny little strands, giant hanks of sparkling beads that glitter in direct light. I am tying the sweetest of knots, each one a blessing, a  peck on the cheek, a soft breath blowing dandelion-seed wishes swirling out into the universe. I am making the strongest connections, hand-forged with faith and trust, with giant bolts and thick hemp ship’s rope. It’s made up of words, the only thing we really have to work with. Words both sublime and dangerous, lacy and speckled, powerful and divine. It’s meant to ride out the transition between frozen and wet, this slushy muddy time, this “dirty end of winter”.

We are spending the whole day outside again, in hats and sand, snow boots and tee shirts. With sap and fire and bricks and snow and blinding peaks of just born grasses.. With Sugar Camp Grilled Cheese on the menu and s’mores and hot smoky tea.

The winds are here. The storm will certainly rise and stretch its mean beak right at us. And we will be safe here in this nest of stones, fire, smoldering poetry, and kindness. Come on over and pull up a seat.

and birch-against-the-sky. thanks for asking.

BE:

positive

abundant

prolific and fulfilled

gracious

sweet

a creative force to be reckoned with!

MAKE:

stamped message jewelry

a penny rug

embroidery

wool needle case

capes!

knickers with foldover elastic

scissor case

draw birds and horses

banners

braided rug

quilt

more hula hoops

sugar free ketchup

DO:

re-construct Etsy site

print 100 (40 more to go)tee shirts

play the banjo ukelele (in public)

move forward with graduate school

Do Daily:

be outside

tidy

draw

walk

express gratitude

caption here.

So I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions–I make hefty, unreasonable and impossible to do lists on New Year’s Eve and check the items off one by one as I handcraft them all year long.My list for 2009 is not yet complete, but I will post it by midnight!

NEVER CRY ABOUT A DIXIE CUP.
Something profound about her smoky blue eyes and the way they played with the light of the world, the way they made the stars look dim and the sky look like it was doing an impression of something great. A little more about peace and great adventure and passionate longing and real truths and happily ever after and true love always. Yes please, a little more about that. Never cry about a Dixie cup, they are made of paper and they are quite nice. Try to trust your instincts and follow your heart when it comes to these matters. When these circumstances arise, realize what you have, what your dreams are. Don’t just complain and hurt others with negativity.
Something lovely about a dream Magic Fox Dances once had. It was of her grandmother who had passed. Magic Fox Dances saw her grandmother sitting on the edge of her very own bed in her nightgown, like Magic Fox Dances had seen her dozens of times before. Her grand mother had a sad loving true look on her face. Bella Donna Moon smiled with her eyes still staying sad. This is possible and you know it. It happens to people every day. Any way, her grandmother looked up at her and beckoned with one pretty hand. For some reason in the dream her grand mother could not speak and so Bella Donna Moon beckoned. Magic Fox Dances went over to the bed to sit next to her, half sitting with one leg straight and on the floor for balance. Magic Fox Dances noticed she was a little girl again, in that little girl body, though her mind was of now, of knowing and ages. Magic Fox Dances was clear in the dream, and grandmother was hazy, fogged at the edges in a beautiful picturesque antique way. Her grand mother took her hand and turned it palm up. Bella Donna Moon had been sorting her button box and now Bella Donna Moon was pulling buttons and the most beautiful charms out of it and placing them in her grand daughter’s upturned hand while she held the hand up with hers underneath it for support. At first, as Bella Donna Moon placed each button, it seemed like the girl could hear words and letters being said. Magic Fox Dances looked into her hand, still supported firmly, lovingly by her grandmother’s own frail sweet warm hand and Magic Fox Dances saw that each button was a word – all the words grandmother could not say right now. Grandmother “said”,
“I love you.” “A bushel and a peck!” “ I miss you so much” “ I wish I could hold you one last time, I wish I could always hold you” “dying was easier because you were there with me” “dying wasn’t so bad once I let go. I do wish that it would be easier for you, your living and your passing. I wish that for you like I wished for you, like baby stars and lambs and every sweetness.” “Always, ALWAYS keep wonder in your heart. It’s the only way to really be alive, to be excited about what is next, the future, and to not be bogged down in negativity and the past. “ Then as the words became sweeter and more real, more touching, they began to take form. The words became landscape pieces, little animals and beings, little songs and tiny sewing notions and all of wonder and goodness.
The granddaughter looked down into her hand and peered at the tiny universe that had begun to unravel in there. Magic Fox Dances saw a tiny unicorn prancing clumsily at first, then more steady on it’s hooves, it had a plum colored ribbon in it’s mouth and seemed to be dancing quite deliberately in a circle. Ah ha, Magic Fox Dances thought, here comes a lamb, fuzzy and warm, with a scarlet ribbon in her mouth, following the unicorn. Then more animals appear, swallows with olive green ribbons, a naughty little fox with a periwinkle ribbon, already torn to shreds though and dirty too; horses with mustard yellow ribbons, all joining in a circular parade until eventually it became a carousel right there in the palm of her hand, then the carousel became encapsulated in a snow globe filled with glitter, Magic Fox Dances shook it, the glitter changing colors from rose to silver to periwinkle to gold back to rose then lavender. The granddaughter continued to stare at the globe and the still parading animals, totally mystified and filled with wonder. Magic Fox Dances looked back up and met her grandmother’s gaze. They both yearned to kiss to hug and embrace for a good long time, but it was not possible. The little girl is a grown woman with a family and very little girl of her own, and The lovely Bella Donna is long gone now, her footprints in the glittery snow fallen all around the broken carousel lead far away back into the deep dark wood.

The warm wind pushing off the cold for one more day.
Rubies and garnets and birth stones form past lives. Chalcedony and wire. Feldspar and tonic, dirt, moss, and citrine, all colors forever dovetailing perfections and tiny heartbeats.
Darling.

The moon serpent was hanging halfway between the two birches, their papered bark rustling, it’s crescent slicing the air into heat and freeze, thick and scrawny, lonely and overwhelmed.

What will this day bring?

* Birds of all feathers, tropical and misty and north woods and calliope specked and striped bumble-birds. time canopies and swing daddi-os. Spiky headed peckers with doo dads in their hair.

* Sweaters! With flair and fanfare. With stitches and flowers and pockets full of glory and the real antidotes to boredom and sadness.
* Stars! Twinkling and dreamy and bright and dim and sharp and fine tuned like heaven’s headlights. Like a rose saddled and backwards riding out the dawn days into heaven’s headlights of mornings.
* Fever pitches of rosy cheeks and warm caresses. Sweet nothings and sweet every things and sweet every thing in between.

and digs out little holes in your bones / chips away at your perfection and knocks against your heart. It takes your breath away. The rust creeps in and steals the alive. It replaces it with oxidized hard chill and scratchy sinkholes that suck the light. It sneaks up, cloaked inside the winter’s howl. It sneaks in with the water droplets of spring rain. The rust creeps in and leaves behind beautiful sepia damage…